Modern bowling balls are typically made of a urethane shell with a resin coating. Although the shell normally appears solid at a distance, its surface is usually porous when viewed close-up or microscopically. This shell surface porosity gives the ball a higher coefficient of friction than would be expected of an object that generally feels and appears to be smooth. This friction allows the ball to “grip” the lane, causing the ball to “hook”—that is, change direction due to spin imparted to the ball by a bowler's delivery, imbalance in the core of the ball, or both.
Since early in the twentieth century, the practice of oiling bowling lanes has been universal. Originally intended to reduce the wear and tear on the wooden lanes that occurred from repeated play, now the application of oil in patterns is often used to make it easier (or more difficult) to achieve high scores. Most bowling establishments strip old oil off the lanes and re-oil at least once a day, or occasionally more often.
Dust, dirt, and other foreign debris inevitably settle out of the air onto the oil on the lane, and, as balls roll or slide through the oil, the pores on the surface of the balls become clogged or filled with an oil-and-dirt mixture. After a ball has been used for some time, ball performance will change, usually considered a negative change, due to the friction coefficient of the ball surface changing as the pores of the shell surface become clogged with dirt and oil.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,811,763 entitled BOWLING BALL REJUVENATOR (hereinafter “the '763 patent”) describes a device commonly known as or related to a “Rejuvenator” device that is used in some bowling establishments. As set out in the '763 patent, the Rejuvenator works by heating a rotating bowling ball from one side to remove the oil-dirt mixture. In some models a ball wiper or oil vacuum is used to remove the oil from the ball once the oil-dirt mixture has beaded to the ball surface of the heating ball. While the Rejuvenator is effective at cleaning bowling balls, it is exceedingly expensive due to the complicated set up of the rotating motor and heating element requirements. Further, the Rejuvenator is most effective at cleaning the areas of the bowling ball that come in close proximity to the heating element. Because the heating element is located to the side of the ball, the sides of the ball are subject to a more aggressive heat treatment than the top and bottom of the ball. Thus, the ball must be run through the Rejuvenator in multiple orientations or for a relatively long time for it to effectively clean the entire bowling ball, otherwise it has areas with varying amounts of oil and dirt on its shell surface after treatment.
Embodiments of the invention address these and other limitations of the prior art.